Airline policies unwritten for death of a passenger

Friday

Feb 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMFeb 29, 2008 at 1:28 AM

By Samantha Gross, Associated Press

New York | When Rubina Husain's husband died aboard an airliner, she shielded her 10-year-old daughter's eyes so she wouldn't see her daddy's body carried through the cabin.Then, with the corpse covered up and tucked away in a rear galley, the passengers who had stood around and stared after the man collapsed returned to eating and chatting. The Athens-to-New York jetliner continued on to its destination for eight or nine more hours. And the in-flight movie was shown as planned."It felt like a never-ending flight," says Husain, whose husband died in 1998 after an asthma attack.Abid Husain, who couldn't be saved despite CPR and an epinephrine shot from a doctor friend who was aboard, was one of hundreds of people who have died on airplanes in recent years - a dreadful and often traumatizing experience for family members and fellow passengers who are forced to take a close-up look at frailty and death and share their journey in close quarters with a corpse."It's one of the most overwhelmingly emotional situations possible," said Heidi MacFarlane, a spokeswoman for MedAire, a company that has doctors available on the ground to advise flight crews in a medical emergency. "When you're the one sitting next to the remains, it can be shocking and upsetting."The macabre phenomenon has received renewed attention since a 44-year-old woman died on a flight from Haiti to New York last week, drawing complaints from her family that the airline did not do enough to respond.When a passenger is stricken aboard a plane, flight crews and travelers with medical training often pull out emergency medical supplies and rush to save the patient's life in full view of other passengers.If the person dies, the crew often throws a blanket over the corpse or puts it in a body bag, an item routinely kept on some planes. The dead passenger is sometimes placed on the floor in a galley area, or kept buckled in his or her seat, since a corpse cannot be allowed to block certain emergency exits. Pilots may consider making an emergency landing, but often they keep going.Airlines are not required to track or report the medical incidents they handle, so an exact tally of in-flight deaths is hard to find. But fatalities and serious illnesses on airplanes are rare when compared to the large number of people who fly.MedAire is on call for about one-third of the world's commercial flights and counted 89 deaths in 2006. That means that if a similar death rate occurs on the other flights, the number of annual deaths exceeds 260.The Federal Aviation Administration requires airlines to stock certain emergency medical supplies, such as defibrillators, syringes and epinephrine, and train flight attendants in CPR and some first aid.FAA spokesman Les Dorr said he was unaware of any policies that specifically address what should be done if someone dies in flight. The airlines make those decisions on their own."When there is a death aboard a flight the general procedure is to move the deceased to an area of the cabin where they can be isolated to some extent and covered in as dignified a way as possible," said Tim Smith, a spokesman for American Airlines, which is under scrutiny over the death last week of Carine Desir.While the pilot has the option of diverting the plane after someone has died, often the flight continues on to its destination. If the flight lands in another location, the family of the dead passenger often has to make arrangements to transport the body.In Desir's case, her body was covered with a blanket and placed on the floor in first class. Other passengers were moved to seats farther away. The plane continued on to New York, even though it could have put down in Miami.In Desir's case, a cousin who was with her claimed that she was initially refused access to oxygen tanks and that they weren't working. American Airlines said that she was helped swiftly and that the equipment worked."My wife died on the plane," said her husband, Mario Fontus. "And I want to know what happened on that plane."